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Bingo was originally called "Beano" and it was played at county
fairs with a caller drawing discs from a cigar box and players
marking their cards with beans to cover the numbers called. Once a
player won, he or she would yell "Beano"! A recorded history of
bingo dates back to 14th Century Italy. From there, in the late
1770's the game moved to France, where it was mostly played by the
wealthy elite. Soon after, bingo made its mark in Germany amongst
children who played it for educational purposes. It was only in 1929
that bingo arrived in the United States, at which time it was still
called "Beano." The name "Bingo" was coined by happy accident - a
beano player at a county fair yelled "Bingo!" instead of "Beano" and
ta da... BINGO was born!
A man named Edwin Lowe together
with Carl Leffler redeveloped the game of beano into bingo. They
also worked to diversify the game, so that by 1930 there were over
6000 different bingo cards and the game of bingo began to catch on
in popularity. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played
weekly around the world.
Today, bingo is played in many
different ways by millions of people around the world. While some
bingo players still use cardboard cards and markers to cover the
called numbers, many land-based bingo halls now use paper sheets
where bingo players use ink daubers to mark the called bingo
numbers. Still other land-based bingo halls have video bingo
machines that automatically post the called bingo numbers.
However, it is the Internet that
is responsible for the latest evolution of bingo. Thanks to the
Internet, online bingo games are now only a few simple mouse clicks
away!
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